2013/07/31

The time has finally come to make a tutorial about how to make my Grannysquare Blanket, yay! Since I don't know how to write patterns in English, I will do my best to present the process in pictures. Basic crochet skills are required. If you don't know them, YouTube has lots of great tutorials or you could purchase the book Happy Hooker which is great!

What you need:
Yarn (I use double alpaca yarn), 3 different colours and 1 colour for the borders (I use off-white)
Crochet hook (I use this one, 4mm , highly recommended!)
Scissors
(& not in the picture: a needle for the finishing touch)

The amount of yarn depends on how big you want to make your blanket. You can of course use other materials such as wool and cotton. My blanket weighs approximately 1.5 kilos where half of the weight is the off-white.

Start with 3 chain stitches which you connect with a slip stitch, to make it a tiny circle.

Continue with the same colour of the yarn and make 12 double crochet stitches with 1 chain stitch between each double crochet stitch. Connect the last chain stitch with a slip stitch in the first double crochet stitch.

Colour number 2, 2 double crochet stitches between the first row's double crochet stitches and 1 chain stitch between each couple of double crochet stitches. A tip is to let the previous colour's "left overs" join the journey so you won't have to sew them in later on. Saves you many hours of work.

Join together like the first row.

Colour number 3, 3 double crochet stitches between the second row's double crochet stitches and 1 chain stitch between each three double crochet stitches.

The colour part is finished! This is where I usually stop and mass produce the amount of squares I want to make, to keep better track on the colour combinations (I always make each square different), before joining all together with the off-white border.

The beginning of the off-white border. IMPORTANT: The squares are crocheted together, so you do it as you go along. This to make the pattern between the squares, which I will show you below.

The border! This is where the square shape happens. Between two groups of double crochet stitches, make 2 double crochet stitches, 1 chain stitch and 2 double crochet stitches again. Repeat between the next two groups (I hope the pictures show what I mean). Between the third group of double crochet stitches, make 3 triple crochet stitches with 3 chain stitches between them and repeat until finish.

The finished square!
Time to make another one.

Second circle to become a square.

Crochet the squares together as you go along (IMPORTANT!). Why important? See below:

To get this pattern between the squares.

This is what it should look like when the squares are joined together.

A tip: Sew in the threads as you go along, it's more fun than doing it all at the end of the project.

Now it's time for the finishing border which will go around the whole blanket. It's only made of double crochet stitches.

Around the blanket you make 3 double crochet stitches, 1 chain stitch and 3 double crochet stitches at the same place. Repeat as shown in the picture. Where the squares meet I make 2 double crochet stitches, 1 chain stitch and 2 double crochet stitches at the end of the square and repeat it at the beginning of the next square. The border can be made with thousands of variations and here I present the way I make it.

There will be many leftovers, someone gave me the tip to put it outside for birds to build houses of. Imagine how colourful that house would be!

The result! I make my blankets with 14x12 squares. The finished blanket is measures about 125 x 105 cm / 50" x 40" and weighs approximately 1.5kg.

Good luck and LOTS of fun!

Feel free to visit my virtual tip jar if you found this information great and helpful, thank you :)

Hi Sandra, what a beautiful blanket, and a great tutorial! Thank you so much for sharing. I'm a beginner but I will try to make your blanket. I live in the Netherlands and here is not so much yarn for sale as in the US. Practically none, I'm afraid. Can you tell me what the brand is of the yarn you used? Maybe I can buy it on the internet, and have it shipped to Holland. Thanks again!

thanks for sharing the tutorial to make your beautiful blanket! There's one thing which is not totally clear to me, and that is how you join the squares together? Is that through the chain stitches? And how do you do that?

THANK YOU SOOO MUch for this tutorial! But I do have a couple of questions! 1 on the join once you get to the second row and you are dealing with three squares how do you complete the join? Do you stitch into more than one corner? I will put 25$ immediately in your tip jar if you PLEASE share what brand and weight of yarn you used for this blanket. I am having a a lot of trouble finding alpaca yarn that has this many colors?

Thank you so much! I always loved your blanket and tried making on myself using a similar pattern but, not exactly the same and boy could you tell lol. Can't wait to get started on this--- after I finish all the Christmas gifts I have lined up. Thanks again.

I'm making this blanket and have a couple of questions for you on joining: Do you join the corners in all three of the chain sts or just the middle one? And, do you make a chain st between the groups of double crochet? It's hard to tell in the pictures and the zooming in on things doesn't make it better. So far I've been making the group of the double crochet between the corners with a chain st between each group, but I want to make sure I'm doing it right :-)

Thank for such a quick reply! I realize I may have referred to the wrong group in my question... Just to make sure: is there a chain st between the two repeats of the groups of double crotchets? Like so: 2 dc 1cs 2dc in the same place then 1 chain st before the next repeat or not?

I'm sorry if I bother you with this! Your blanket is so lovely, I don't want to ruin it ;-)

i'm sorry if i'm confusing you, i have completely forgotten the names for the stitches (english is not my mothertongue) so i don't know how to explain. hopefully this is correct: 2 dc and then 1 slip stitch and then 2 more dc. :)

Dear Sandra, thank you so much for sharing! I'm practically learning to crochet along with this tutorial (:One question: do you chain up 3 stitches at the beginning of every new row? Or just start doing the double/triple crochets after finishing the previous row and changing the colour? My circles are looking a bit wavy, I wonder if it is because I didn't do the chaining at the beginning...

hello Sandra! this is Caro Horvath from buenos aires! how are you? one stupid question...How do you avoid the central circle to open?(i made a magic ring, and hide the left yarn, but they still crack open sometimes)thanks a lot and kind regards!